YOUNG TALENTS
Creating Rituals
Anna Moldenhauer: Why did you decide after graduating to go it alone as a designer?
Arthur Bitsch: Well, that was my goal when I was still a student as I value the freedom that working independently offers. I’d already worked in a company with a focus on industrial design and now wanted greater scope for creativity in my own projects.
You have an interdisciplinary approach to work, from consultation to the design of products such as the “Altar” series. And you attach great importance to your creations being made in France – what challenges did you have to overcome in order to build up the necessary network?
Arthur Bitsch: France experienced some problems with industrialization in the 1980s, and it’s important to me to strengthen local production in my own generation, too. It takes some time to build up a network, but the investment pays off as can be seen in the quality of the results. For the “Altar” series I also collaborated with firms from the construction sector to be able to recycle waste materials from building sites.
“Altar” comprises luminaires and induction chargers for smart phones appropriately named “Idol”. How did the idea take off?
Arthur Bitsch: It began with an exhibition on the topic of ritual. Essentially, I explored what a ritual actually is and what significance it still has today through a conceptual series on the visualization of everyday objects. Then there were metaphysical issues such as religiously motivated processes and science, which now represents a new kind of religion. I tend to use symbolism in all my work and in the process lend a spiritual meaning to my objects. I regard them as something like talismans.
For example, there is something of the ritual about charging a phone.
Arthur Bitsch: Precisely. As a designer and artist you represent the contemporary in your work and for contemporary society the smart phone has become a kind of spiritual object, which provides us access to the digital world. A critique of that practice can also be sensed in my “Altar” series.
One of your current projects is the “Coal” table, which you created by upcycling burnt OSB panels and smoked glass. In the description it says: “The symbolism of fire and consumption by fire recalls a civilization on the brink of extinction that is slowly dying out.” That sounds dystopian.
Arthur Bitsch: The idea is divided into a conceptual and a technical aspect – on the technical side, there was the idea of recycling OSB from the construction sector and producing a different pattern, a dark effect, through the use of fire. The smoked glass goes well with this. On the conceptual side, you have the complexe structure, which to some extent represents the structures found in Brutalist architecture of the 1980s, and in some sense, also in Gothic cathedrals. A mixture of decadence and a sustainable aspiration, which defines our civilization today. I suppose you could read the approach as dystopian, but with reference to the 19th century, likewise as the romanticism of the ruin.
Do you work on several projects at the same time?
Arthur Bitsch: Yes, for example I’m collaborating with a company that specializes in upcycling parts for the construction sector. The aim is to recycle prototypes from the building sector and then sell them in that same sector. Its largely about concepts for global design that involves artistic direction or a design mindset and the branding. I’ve always wanted to work like this in different areas of design rather than specializing. I studied spatial design and then object design. I see design as a global discipline and as such I would like to get involved in many different projects.
What are you currently working on?
Arthur Bitsch: This year at SaloneSatellite I presented several prototypes of luminaires including the suspension fixtures for them. Now it’s a matter of refining them, producing them, and launching them on the market in small series. I’m also working on graphic designs I started on two years ago.
